


alexandria

by salvage



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, chapter 28 came into my house and punched me directly in the face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28163520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: When Harry first saw the name on the roster, his heart leapt before quickly sinking. There must be dozens of John Bridgenses in London, and besides, the age written beside this particular name on the official crew roster forHMS Erebuswas 26, and Harry knew his John Bridgens to have surpassed that age quite before Harry had ever met him. But he traveled, nevertheless, to the street north of the Thames where John rented rooms whenever he was not at sea. At any rate, it was a good excuse to see John again.
Relationships: John Bridgens/Henry "Harry" Peglar
Comments: 12
Kudos: 37





	alexandria

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the idea, Dan, but my city now.

When Harry first saw the name on the roster, his heart leapt before quickly sinking. There must be dozens of John Bridgenses in London, and besides, the age written beside this particular name on the official crew roster for _HMS Erebus_ was 26, and Harry knew his John Bridgens to have surpassed that age quite before Harry had ever met him. But he traveled, nevertheless, to the street north of the Thames where John rented rooms whenever he was not at sea. At any rate, it was a good excuse to see John again.

In a year’s time, in two and certainly in three, if it came to that, Harry knew he would look back at the cool early spring breeze that now ruffled his hair as he now remembered the hot and humid equatorial air that had kept a constant sheen of sweat on his forehead and his clean-shaven upper lip and the tan back of his neck. For now it made for perfect walking weather and Harry savored the walk. He never more enjoyed his time in London than in the few months between signing up for a new voyage and setting sail. What sometimes seemed like a drearily oppressive place steeped in old and unpleasant memories took on the rosy glow of nostalgia: imagining missing London made him love London, if only to give himself something to want to return to when voyage ended. 

Harry had only a vague remembrance of John’s address but when he set out to find the building his body remembered the way exactly: that intersection, then the next; the bookseller and the pub they would go to afterward, placing their brown paper–wrapped packages carefully away from the sticky half-circles of beer left on the tables by previous patrons; the narrow alley that was still inhabited by the plump orange cat that John would always give a few pets to each evening before returning home. Harry knelt, hand outstretched, when he reached the alleyway, and the cat trotted up to him and pressed its soft face against his rope-callused foretopman’s fingers. He obligingly scratched behind its ears. 

He had missed John: it had been more than a year since they had last been in contact, and even that had been a brief missive from Harry upon his return from _Wanderer_ ’s last voyage, letting him know Harry was back in London, was alive, and John’s kind invitation for him to come to tea in response. Harry had meant to go to see him, and had continued to mean to while not actually going. Time seemed to pass slowly but also so quickly when Harry was on land, one day dissolving into the next like a dream, seamlessly, without the clear sound of the ship’s bell to mark each hour’s end. He knew it was much the same for John, who was as much meant for the sea as Harry was; John had told him as much early on in their friendship, when they were pressed close together on the bunk in John’s little quarters, John patiently watching Harry trace clumsy letters John had outlined for him in John’s own notebook. 

Harry had, somewhat foolishly in retrospect, asked what such a learned man as John was doing serving as a steward in the Royal Navy; John had replied by asking why Harry had joined up, which, like so many of the questions John asked him, forced Harry to examine his own self rather than blithely answering. It was one of the things he loved about John, John’s kind but deliberate and relentless questioning, not just of Harry but of the world, and of the books he read, and of himself. There was something so innately curious about John, still, even after the years he had been alive and all the many things he had seen during his career. Unlike many other veterans in the service John did not pretend to know everything when speaking to younger servicemen, and this made Harry want to be like John, serious and contemplative, commenting only when he had some carefully considered insight to share. 

The cat twined about Harry’s legs when he stood and approached the door to Bridgens’s lodgings and in the moment it took for John’s landlady to answer the door the cat succeeded in getting a good deal of its orange hair all over the ankles of Harry’s trousers. The landlady, a Mrs. Franklin, no relation, recognized Harry after a moment of squinting at him through the lenses of her glasses. “Oh! That good friend of dear Mr. Bridgens! Of course!” she exclaimed, shepherding him through the door and into the stuffy sitting room. Harry politely declined a cup of tea and she waved him upstairs. Harry suspected that Mrs. Franklin knew about John’s proclivities, and Harry’s, in turn, but she had only ever been friendly and welcoming to the both of them, giving them space and a certain amount of discretion when they required it and even when they didn’t. Harry truly liked her, and moreover, he liked that John had her rooms to return to when he had to be on land. 

In contrast to the close dark stairway that led to John’s door, Harry knew John’s rooms to be airy and light, and this was never more obvious than it was in the moment when John opened the door for Harry, his familiar silhouette limned with pale yellow sunlight. 

“Harry,” John said with a smile. 

Harry hugged him in reply, surprising himself as much as he did John: seeing him again had awoken the dormant affection that Harry always felt for him, as though some part of Harry knew that the only way he could live apart from John for such long periods of time was to suppress how dear he truly was to him. John seemed hale when Harry drew back to look at him properly, hands still gripping John’s biceps. The always neat steward was as well dressed as one could be without a jacket: his fine wool waistcoat was old but very carefully kept, his wide cravat was perfectly tied, and his shirt was pressed tidily, points of the collar near to brushing the close-cropped gray hair of his beard. Through the material of John’s shirt Harry could feel the warmth of his body, the soft give of skin and taut resistance of muscles where Harry held him. 

They exchanged pleasantries, I’m fines and how are yous and observations about the weather, as John ushered Harry over to the two plush chairs that sat close together before the fireplace, where occurred a brief battle of wills regarding who would take the more comfortable chair. Harry won, claiming the less comfortable one, watching the way John adjusted his waistcoat and tugged the cuffs of his shirtsleeves over his wrists once he had settled. His fussy, particular movements were so familiar and so dear to Harry. And then John leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, looking at Harry with a searching shrewdness. 

An unexpected trepidation beset Harry as he prepared to broach the subject of the Northwest Passage expedition. He was prepared to drop out of the expedition to give John the opportunity to undertake what would likely be his last great adventure; there would be other Discovery Service expeditions that would sate Harry’s curiosity regarding the natural world, and perhaps not others to sate John’s. Yet Harry _wanted_ to go on this voyage, wanted to see the vast expanses of icy terrain and glimmering sun-gilded seracs that he had read about in the accounts of Ross and Parry. He wanted to see the fantastic multicolored lights of the Aurora Borealis dancing across the black skies of the endless Arctic night. And he wanted, too, to see the clear open water of the Passage stretching out to the horizon from his place in the foretop, high above where thick slabs of ice parted before the prow of the ship to reveal the dark expanse of the sea, hearing the low hum of wind in the sails and the high whistle of it through the rigging. 

“I am prepared to remove myself from the roster of Erebus,” John said, surprising Harry just as he had begun to marshal his thoughts. 

“What?” Harry ended up exclaiming, to his own disappointment: he had hoped to be more eloquent than this during his first conversation with John in over a year. 

“Should you not wish to—”

“No!” Harry said. “No, I’ll step down. There’s sure to be another voyage for me. Perhaps not…” _for you_ , Harry wanted to continue, but although he knew John’s elevation of truth as the foremost among virtues would spare his indignity at having his advanced age mentioned, Harry’s courtesy would not allow it. 

John laughed softly. “For me; you may say it.”

Harry felt abashed, and then smiled to remember: “I was unsure whether it was really you on the roster because Osmer recorded the age of the John Bridgens who is assigned to _Erebus_ as twenty-six.” 

“Charles’s idea of a joke, I’m afraid,” John said, and then, contemplatively, “or possibly a favor.” 

“At any rate,” Harry said. 

“Yes,” John said, and he looked away from Harry at the soot-darkened grate that stood in front of the fireplace or perhaps at the embers of the fire that smoldered behind it. “We might,” he continued hesitantly, “both go.” 

“We are assigned to different ships,” Harry immediately pointed out, relieved. 

“I should not want either of us to miss out on such an opportunity as this,” John said very seriously, still looking at the grate or the little fire it obscured. 

Harry studied his profile, the curve of his strong nose, his neatly trimmed beard and the soft gray wave of his rather unfashionably long hair. He suddenly wanted, now that it was allowed for him to want, for the both of them to discover the Passage together: for John’s last voyage to be such a successful and publicly lauded one, and for Harry to be by his side throughout, passing books between one another’s berths, and letters, which Harry would write in his backward way and John would laughingly chastise him for, and sometimes moments, when they could be stolen, during which Harry could perhaps look at John’s profile the way he did now: memorizing the ways it had changed between the last time he had seen him and now; memorizing, too, the ways it had stayed the same.

Then John turned to pin Harry with his keen and knowing gaze, a little smile visible beneath his neatly trimmed mustache. “Did you really come all the way here just to offer to step down from the voyage?” 

Caught out but not unpleasantly, Harry quickly looked away. “It seemed politer than sending a letter,” he said, a tremor of laughter underlying the words. 

“Harry,” John said, with such fondness Harry nearly melted under the force of it. He felt flung backward in time, abruptly again an overeager midshipman desperate for John to praise the crooked alphabets he painstakingly pencilled in John’s own notebook while perched in the foretop of the _Beagle_ under the warm equatorial sun.

“John,” Harry replied helplessly. They reached for one another, both of Harry’s hands catching one of John’s, not callused rope-rough but nimbler and softer, and Harry dipped his head down to press his lips to John’s knuckles and the back of his hand, the slim ridges of bones under the skin, the fine down of soft dark hair. “I have missed you,” Harry said without looking up.

“You needn’t apologize to me,” John said, squeezing Harry’s fingers with his own. 

Harry pressed another kiss to the back of John’s hand, breathing in the scent of his skin. He remembered this hand gently guiding his finger over a word that was giving Harry particular trouble, helping him sound out the syllables. He remembered this hand cradling his jaw, splayed over the nape of his neck, clutching at his bicep, his hip, his thigh. Saints and pilgrims. Reverently Harry turned John’s hand palm-up in his own, slim fingers curling gently toward the little cup of his palm, and he brushed his callus-worn thumb over the soft curve of the heel of John’s hand. 

“Harry,” John repeated quietly.

Harry kissed John’s palm, feeling the tips of John’s fingers come to rest against the soft underside of Harry’s jaw, and he pushed John’s shirt cuff up the column of his arm to kiss the hot skin at the very base of his wrist, pale enough from a winter spent in London that Harry could see the dark tracery of veins beneath. He thought about John’s tattoos, hidden beneath his shirt, some crisp and black, some a mottled, faded gray with their soft edges spidering into the clean skin adjacent. He thought about gleaming blocks of ice cracking and splitting to reveal thin slivers of the fathomless sea. 

John moved his hand to cradle Harry’s jaw, stroking his cheek affectionately. “The truth of it is that I shall be glad to share my last voyage with someone who… understands me.” 

“Last voyage? You make it sound so dire.” Harry said with a frown, turning his face toward John’s palm to press his lips to it then clasping it again between his own and drawing back to look again at his dear face.

“I only meant—” John began, but Harry cut him off, reciting:

“And Death, whenever he comes to me, / Shall come on the wild unbounded sea.” 

John smiled. “Something like that.”


End file.
